Going Geuse?
by nvzblgrrl
Summary: Where, exactly, does the ghost-half of a halfa come from? Instead of being half-dead, Danny's found himself in a permanent state of half-possession from a certain ghost with a penchant for trouble and munching on bugs...
1. Chapter 1

Danny's eyes swam as the camera flash went off. "Okay, I showed you the portal, my parents are gonna be back any minute, can we go now?" He asked, rubbing his eyes with the jumpsuit that his friends had insisted on having a picture with.

Sam grinned, lowering her Polaroid camera as she looked inside the electrical cord-filled guts of what was supposed to be a portal to another, spectral dimension. "You aren't even slightly amazed by this?" She asked, twisting some dials on the side of it with black lacquered nails to show the same two o'clock position on all three.

Danny rolled his eyes. "It doesn't even work." He said, casting an aside glance at the monstrosity, largely missing his gothic friend's tinkering.

"Yeah, but you seriously aren't even slightly stoked about a portal to another dimension?" Tucker said, staring at the constellations of glowing LEDs in the shadowed interior of the Fenton ™ Ghost Portal. He crouched down to his knees to look up at the ceiling of the tunnel. "Wait, did your parents dig under the street to give this thing room? Pretty sure they didn't get a permit for that."

Danny shrugged. "Honestly, based on what my parents have told me about the place that they're trying to access, I'm kind of in the opposite direction of… un… stoked, alright, that was terrible." He rubbed the bridge of his nose, ignoring the strict 'legalities' of his parents interests. "Let's just say that I'm happier with it not-working, okay?"

"It's not even a little cool?" Sam asked, raising her eyebrows at him.

A small smile crossed Danny's face. "Okay, maybe a little." He admitted, his eyes wandering across the gloomy interior of the portal. "Just imagine what a Ghost Zone would look like."

Tucker grinned. "Green? Gloomy? Slightly hovery?"

Sam smirked. "Burtonesque?" She suggested. "Filled with spirals and black, white, and green mingling into chaotic swirls that the souls of the departed coast along for their astral journey into mystery? A surrealist painting to facilitate the amazing fantasy of the afterlife?"

Danny laughed. "Either or, I guess." He said, pulling on the white and black jumpsuit one leg at a time. He paused as Sam quickly tore off the Fenton logo.

"You don't need to be going around with your dad's face on your chest." She said quickly, before pulling a bit of black vinyl out of her backpack. "Now this, this is slightly more up to speed." She said as she smoothed out the stylized 'D' on his chest.

"Looks cool to me." Tucker chimed in happily.

Danny smoothed out a few wrinkles in the suit and looked at the portal to nowhere. "Is it just me, or is this starting to look like the beginning of a horror B-movie?" He asked.

Sam chuckled. "Or maybe a superhero flick?"

Danny laughed. "Maybe." He turned to face the dark interior of the Fenton ™ Ghost Portal, taking a last gulp of air. "If I die, avenge me." He called back to Sam and Tucker as he reached out to feel his way along the wall. As he felt a button press in under the weight of his palm and heard some turbine at the back of the portal whir to life as consequence, Danny wished he had the time to slam his head against the wall. Repeatedly.

Electrocution for self-inflicted punishment for bonehead moves worked too, he guessed, as what felt like a couple thousand volts of electricity hit him. He blacked out for a moment, black and white stripes dancing across his vision and the sound of manic laughter ringing in his ears.

* * *

"First of all; ow." Danny groaned weakly after he dragged himself out of the now glowing portal, steaming and covering his eyes. He looked back at the eerily glowing doorway into the afterlife. "Aaand now it's working. Great." He muttered as he collapsed on the lab floor.

"Danny! Are you okay?" Tucker asked, kneeling down to his friend's level. Sam hovered nearby, watching with obvious concern in her eyes.

Danny reached up gingerly to hold his head, mussing up his already wild black hair. "I can taste my fillings and I feel like Dash found a way to punch my brain instead of using bad nicknames, but I think I'll live." He looked over to Sam. "Please don't tell me you took a picture of that."

She laughed deliriously, eyes still clearly worried. "Of course I didn't." The camera quickly disappeared into her bag as she joined Tucker at Danny's side. "Are you alright?"

"Give me an hour." He replied as he pushed himself up on his knees, slowly making his way to the stairs, his friends following close so they could catch him if they needed to.

Jack Fenton, all six foot eight of him, was sitting at the kitchen table, grinning as he fixed the final detail on a BLT that was more B than L and T combined. "You all right there, Danny?" He asked brightly as he stuck what looked like a shish-kabob with several colors of olives in the center of his afternoon snack. "You look dead on your feet." He added after a moment, a slightly worried look on his face.

Danny mentally snorted at that, though he quickly caught himself. _Where the heck had that come from?_ He thought before shaking his head. "Long day at school." He said flatly, limping towards his bedroom. "I'm just gonna… crash for a bit, okay?" He waved tiredly at Sam and Tucker before disappearing through the door. "I'll catch you guys tomorrow, alright?"

Tucker waved uncertainly and Sam just watched him leave, her expression sad and slightly confused.

* * *

Danny turned over in his bed, lifting his head to stare blearily at his alarm clock. It was a few minutes before 3 A.M. He groaned, turning over again to cover his head with his pillow. The laughing from the Ghost Portal was ringing in his ears again, and the feeling of bugs skittering across his skin wasn't helping his insomnia. The teen finally sat up, shuffling to the bathroom where he temporarily blinded himself with the light. He blinked through the flashes of black and white, massaging his eyes before looking at the mirror. He half expected to see some kind of zombie staring back at him, all crooked teeth, jaundiced eyes, and peroxide blonde hair, and he breathed a sigh of relief as he saw himself, worn and sleep-deprived, but still normal. Black messy hair, blue eyes that could barely focus, tan skin that was slightly grey around the edges… "What was I expecting, again?" He chuckled wearily to himself as he gripped the sink.

His reflection grinned jauntily, lazily looking back at him. "I don't know, kid." It said in a gravelly voice, its blue eyes flashing a sickly yellow. "What **were** you expecting?"

Danny quickly ran back to the relative safety of his bedroom, the dark voice chuckling in his ear all the way.

* * *

The blare of his alarm clock startled Danny into wakefulness, and as he fumbled for the 'Off' switch, the nightmare from the night before clinging to his mind like a cobweb. It had to be just that, a nightmare. What else could it have been?

'I don't know… maybe a ghost?' A stray thought suggested smugly, using the same voice that had sent the teen running earlier.

"Not helping." Danny muttered as he held up his clothes from the day before. Well, they looked clean enough. He sniffed them cautiously. Alright, the ozone smell was a little too weird, even for a Fenton. He tossed them into the dirty clothes bin, sighing. Well, there was only so much a hazmat suit could do against a ghost portal, he thought as he opened his closet. Now, what to wear?

* * *

Danny probably should have taken the advice of his 'Don't Do It' shirt and stayed home. It wasn't like his mom hadn't brought it up. But Fenton men weren't exactly known for good judgment. Just look at his near death experience with the ghost portal the other day and his dad's day-to-day wardrobe choices.

But here he was, going through another day at Casper High, getting to listen to a grating stream of running commentary on top of his normal teenage drama. So far he hadn't slipped, though Dash had found himself completely ignored three more times more than his ego was ready for.

"Fenton! You're in Fen-trouble!" He yelled, punching the locker in front of the black haired teen.

Danny failed to look appropriately awed by the train wreck attempt at wordplay, yawning as he slid Dash's hand to the right so he could get into his locker.

"Fenton!" Dash screamed as Danny darted down the hallway to his next class.

* * *

Maybe the locker method was a bit old school (if a kid had died in one after getting shoved in before summer break in the fifties, it wouldn't have been too big of a surprise). Maybe it was a bit of a worn stereotype that would be physically impossible if Casper High's lockers were a little bit smaller. Neither of those facts really occurred to Dash as he shoved Danny Fenton into a locker that he knew didn't get a lot of traffic, especially after school hours. As to how the little weirdo was going to get out, well, that didn't occur to him either. Even if it had, he wouldn't have cared. It was just Fenton after all. What could he do?

* * *

In the dark interior of the locker, Danny's eyes started to glow yellow as minutes and then eventually an hour passed. "Jerk." He snarled quietly as he flicked the old mirror in the locker. "Don't suppose there's an emergency exit here?" He asked the air, right as a wisp of cold came out of his mouth, shocking his teeth. The locker creaked open and Danny looked around. The hall was empty, all the students having ran out of the building at top speed once the bell rang. Danny looked back into the locker and its discolored mirror. "Thanks… I guess." He said to no-one before running out of the building.

* * *

Life didn't get any more normal for Danny Fenton as the week went by. He was still experiencing chills in the strangest places, his nightmares were getting longer and weirder, the voice in his head was somehow becoming more annoying, Sam was being weird around him (weirder, anyway), and his dad was going nuts over their new 'ghost detector'. Well, the last bit was Fenton-level normal, he guessed.

Danny sighed as he closed up his science homework, which was finally finished after having to recopy everything after his dad had spilled… something green and glowing on it. Typical evening in the Fenton house. Putting away his backpack, he paused, picking up a book that he didn't recognize. "The Handbook For the… Recently Deceased?" He read incredulously before flipping it open to a random section, scanning it, and cringing. "It's like trying to read a stereo manual." Danny muttered before tossing it over his shoulder to land in the corner of his room. If it was a prank, though it didn't strike him as either Sam's or Tucker's style, it wasn't that good of one.

He completely missed the card that slipped out of the pages, which read 'DO NOT SAY HIS NAME' in spidery handwriting, and slipped into his pajamas, prepared for another series of surreal dreams.

* * *

This dream was more colorful and clear than normal, filled with golden sand and a painfully blue sky that Danny normally only saw in the dead of summer. Not that he was paying attention to that detail. "Aaand now this dream has just graduated from 'nightmare'-level weird to 'weird 80/90's cartoon' level weird." Danny deadpanned as he stared at the gigantic striped worm that had burst out of the sand in front of him. The creature snarled before another head ("What the hell." Danny murmured.) sprouted out of the first's mouth, baring two separate sets of spiral striped teeth that were two parts raw terror to every one part ridiculous.

'Sandworm!' The voice shrieked, sounding terrified for the first time since it had started playing Greek chorus to Danny's life.

Danny pointed at the newly dubbed sandworm. "Is there a reason why it has a head inside of another head?" He asked.

'Because one head is insufficient to witness the sheer amount of homicide it commits, so shut up and beat feet before it witnesses you, kid!' The voice screamed, almost seeming to take control of Danny's legs as the teen bolted. The sandworm howled, and Danny started running properly, putting on another burst of speed that took him over the golden sands and away from… the thing that really needed a better name than 'sandworm'. 'Evil McGothy Murder Snake From Hell' seemed like a more appropriate title.

Unfortunately, running only encouraged the sandworm to give chase, howling as it dove in and out of the sands in pursuit of prey that should have been too small for a creature of its size to bother with. Danny looked around wildly for some kind of escape, some crack to hide in, something… He blinked. Okay, one magic, floating door a few hundred feet straight up. If only he could fly. Wait, dream logic, right?

'Kid, I hate to make bad puns at a time like this, but that ain't gonna fl-'

The voice cut off as Danny, eyes flashing yellow-green, shot into the air like a bullet, his smaller spray of sand getting swallowed up by the cascade of gold that the sandworm threw up as it burrowed deep into the desert again. The rumbles of the giant predator were drowned out by Danny's manic cry-laughing, even as he pulled open the door and ran for the nearest exit, past the shocked faces of a mixed bag of monsters, the most memorable of which was a mummy-faced judge.

Stopping short just clear of the building, Danny Fenton stared at the bustling, brightly colored, barely physics compliant city. "Well, dang. And here I was hoping for Kansas." He said after taking a moment to process the sheer insanity of it all.

The voice chuckled. "Kid, welcome to the Neitherworld."

"Get back here, Beetlejuice!" A nasal voice screamed from inside the building Danny had just torn through.

"And that's our cue to exit." The voice said through Danny's mouth, snapping his fingers and disappearing in a little puff of smoke, leaving an empty tin can and a startled bat to deal with his problems.

* * *

Danny woke up, running his hand through his hair. "Beetlejuice?" He asked his room. "What kind of name is 'Beetlejuice'?" He muttered as he limped over to his mirror, his reflection looking surprisingly rested for once. Danny rubbed his eyes, gesturing helplessly as he tried to wrap his mind around that strange dream. "Seriously, 'Beetlejuice'?"

"That's my name, feel free to wear it out." His reflection asked, raising an eyebrow as it folded its arms cockily.

Danny dragged his hand down his face. "That wasn't a dream, was it?" He asked.

His reflection grinned, showing off a mouth full of yellowed teeth that rivaled those of most zippers. "Nope! Nice job outrunning that sandworm last night, though. I go to pieces around those things." As Beetlejuice said those words, his form cracked and fell to the bottom of the frame like glass, reforming after a moment, though not into a copy of the teen staring at him. Instead, the ghost appeared as an older, peroxide blonde, and obviously dead man, as made clear by his bloodless skin and the moldy patches that grew on it.

"Did you die in middle of a 80's Halloween party or something?" Danny asked after a moment of silence.

The ghost bared his teeth in what might have been a grin if it wasn't so crooked. "Hey, it's been a while since I've been out of the Neitherworld; cut me some slack on not keeping up with the fashion habits of the living."

"Let me get this straight. You're a ghost." Danny said.

Beetlejuice smirked, gesturing widely. "The ghost with the most, kid."

The teen pinched the bridge of his nose. "I don't even know what that means, but next point; you're haunting me?"

The ghost touched the tips of his red stained fingers together. "Technically yes."

"'Technically'?" Danny's voice jumped up a pitch.

"Well, to be less technical, what makes up me is mixed up inside of you. On the molecular level." A bout of mad scientist laughter tore out of the ghost's mouth as lightning flashed in the background of the mirror.

Danny facepalmed. "The Ghost Portal." He muttered, turning away from the mirror. He looked at the alarm clock. Twenty minutes until school started, meaning… "Great. I missed the bus."

Beetlejuice grinned as the sound of game show music went off inside the mirror. "Exactomundo! You win nothing, nadda, zip, zilch, big-old goose eggs for stating… the obvious!"

Danny spun the mirror on its hinge before grabbing his backpack and running out of the house, leaving the ghost to make sick noises in the mirror.

* * *

School had almost flown by that day, a rare happenstance, but this almost made up for all of it. Danny leaned on his arm, not even listening to his dad as of a few minutes ago, though it was hard to ignore his wild gesticulating, even if the words had since blurred into a distinctly dad-ish hum. He looked over at Tucker, who had dozed off, snoring quietly and drooling out of the corner of his mouth, and then over to Sam, who looked like she wanted to be correcting him on some point, but was too bored to actually do so. He sighed, staring back at his dad, who was now rummaging through scientific glasswork.

'Kid, this is the pits!' Beetlejuice snapped in his ear. Danny winced, rubbing his temple. He still wasn't used to the constant chatter coming from inside his skull, even knowing the cause of it wasn't psychological. The ghost continued. 'Not that I have any issue with pits, but, you know, figure of speech.'

Danny rolled his eyes, drawing Sam's attention. She made a questioning gesture and he pointed at his dad, gesturing helplessly while rolling his eyes again. Apparently satisfied with the non-answer, she pulled out a black bound journal that she had been carrying for a few weeks, scribbling down something. When she didn't show it to Danny, he turned his attention elsewhere, namely, the Ghost Portal.

Which had just opened, spitting out a couple of ghostly octopi. Great.

He checked on his dad, oblivious to anything except his speech and the ghost hunting gear he was rummaging through. Tucker was still asleep, Sam was brooding over something in her black book… Danny surreptitiously pointed his finger at the ghosts, gesturing to eyes that flashed a poisonous yellow-green and then back to them, before miming the crushing of an object.

Apparently, animal-based ghosts did not take courses in teenage sign language, as they decided to grab Tucker and Sam before phasing through the ceiling. Danny's dad was still going on about ghosts, not noticing the actual ghosts, as in accordance with the universal laws of irony.

Alright, time for plan B, Danny thought dryly as he darted up the stairs.

'Plan B? I **love** plan B!' Beetlejuice burst out, sounding like an excited puppy given a range of human speech. 'You gonna let me out? Huh, D-man? Huuuh?'

"As much as I hate the idea… I think it's time to turn on the juice." Danny said, just before his blue eyes flashed yellow-green. His hands curled into red-nailed claws that pulled a black and white stripes from seeming nothingness to settle on his thin frame in the form of a pinstriped suit, the whirl of fabric concealing the rest of his transformation, only allowing the final result to be seen, with the bloodless skin and a rictus grin that rivaled most zippers taking over the boy's human features. "It's show time!" Beetlejuice cackled madly as he flew out of the house, legs forming a striped tail as he flew after Danny's friends.

* * *

It didn't take long to find them, especially with Tucker's screaming. Beetlejuice stopped short of the scene, grinning at the ectopuses and the two teenagers stared, looking completely and utterly confused by his interruption. "What? You never see a bio-exorcist before?" He asked, folding his arms in a pout. "I used to have a reputation, you know."

"Can you skip to the part where you save us?" Tucker asked, eyes flicking between the distant ground, the snarling ectopuses, and the ghost with the most. "If, you know, you're gonna do that."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah." Beetlejuice said, slicking back his hair and studying his nails.

'Are you gonna save them or not?' Danny yelled just for Beetlejuice to hear.

The ghost took a second to wiggle a finger around in his ear, flicking a bit of wax away. "Ugh, fine." He muttered. "Not even gonna get paid for this, am I?" He pooled a bit of green energy into his hands before throwing beams at the two ghosts, swooping in to catch the two falling teens by the back of their shirts. "And stay out!" He screamed after the retreating ectopuses.

"Who are you?" Sam asked, eyes wide as he set them down on the sidewalk outside Fenton Works. Tucker immediately dropped to his knees to kiss the cement.

Beetlejuice grinned crookedly as he pulled a live beetle out of his hair, rolling it between his fingers. "I got a lot of names, little miss licorice stick, and not all of them fit on my business card. But you can call me 'BJ'." He tossed the unfortunate beetle up into the air and caught it in his mouth, biting it in half with a loud crunch.

Sam made a face as the ghost snagged the rest of the bug with a long, purple tongue. "Never heard of a ghost like you before." She said, forcing a straight face.

"Cause there ain't no other ghost like me, babe. I'm the ghost with the most." He smirked, snapping his fingers before disappearing in a puff of smoke and a stray bat that proceeded freak out in the sudden daylight.

"The ghost with the most what?" Tucker asked after a moment. Sam just frowned at where the ghost had been.

* * *

After that, life, as it could be described, went on. Between school, the hectic home life of dodging ghost catching equipment, which Beetlejuice was just as big a magnet for as he was for trouble, dirt, and other ghosts, the occasional night spent in the Neitherworld, and figuring out exactly what kind of perks came with being 'half-ghost', Danny managed to eke out his average existence, though he could have done without the constant stream of 'Do this unspeakable thing' and other assorted Beetlejuice jabber.

"So… Danny. Anything weird happen since the… accident?" Sam asked, leaning against the locker next to Danny's.

"You mean, besides you doing the same unsubtle line of questioning every morning like a random NPC?" Tucker asked as Danny shook his head and hung up his backpack. He shoved his hand over the small mirror stuck to the inside of the locker, leaving Beetlejuice to make faces at him from in between his fingers.

Sam rolled her eyes. "I meant anything weird related to the Ghost Portal." She said.

Danny pulled out his English text book. "Let's see… surreal dreams, Jazz being on my case every day, parents actually managing to make ghost locating equipment that, let's just note this little tidbit, hates me… Yeah, that's about it." He slammed the locker closed with a bang. "Oh, and your psychic powers."

Sam folded her arms. "I do not have psychic powers-"

"You've accurately predicted six different pop quizzes, one pep rally, three dissections, and ten separate comments from the jocks." Tucker said, tapping on his PDA. "Also, three out of the last four ghosts. The 'Bio-Exorcist' guy was the one exception."

"It's not like Dash or Kwan have any original material, come on." Sam scoffed.

"You predicted the ghosts?" Danny asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Well, not all of them…" She said, breaking eye contact.

Tucker mouthed 'three out of four' at Danny before reading off the list out loud. "The octopuses and the giant Sumatran rat."

"I thought we agreed never to talk about that again." Sam muttered as she twisted open the combination to her locker. "Anyway, I don't have psychic powers. But…" Here she smirked. "I do have the power of moral superiority on my side."

As she walked away towards first hour, Tucker and Danny shared a look.

"Did you get an ominous feeling from that too?" Danny asked his best friend.

* * *

Danny raised an eyebrow at the lunch option of the day. "Alright, what is this?" He asked as he set down his lunch tray in front of his Goth friend.

"Turfloaf." Sam said triumphantly.

Tucker's face went blank. "What."

Danny poked the… thing with his fork. "Okay, second question; _why_?"

"The school board finally approved of my ultra-recyclo-vegetarian lunch option." Sam said, smiling proudly at her handiwork, even as Tucker stared unblinkingly into the depths of inedibility. "People are going to be eating responsibly for once!"

"Um, Sam? 'Option' implies that there_ are_ options. This was the only thing there and I'm not even sure that it's edible." Danny poked the literal slice of turf with his fork again. A beetle scrambled out of the grass and he slapped it.

'Gonna eat that?' Beetlejuice asked. Danny flicked it away as the ghost huffed.

"It's the canned pudding incident all over again…" Tucker whispered to no-one.

"It's not… how can you compare it to that?" Sam protested. "Nobody is going to get salmonella from this!"

"It's still garbage." Danny said.

"It's not-!"

"It's garbage." Tucker said flatly as he flipped the plate onto the floor.

Any further conversation was cut off by Danny shivering, a little cloud of mist coming out of his mouth. Sam's eyebrows met her hairline.

"You didn't tell me-"

Danny pushed his chair away from the table and grabbed his lunch tray. "Don't ask, don't tell." He said quickly, breaking for the garbage can. A glob of mud splattered against the back of his head.

"Fenton!" Dash yelled. Danny's eyes flashed a poisonous yellow.

* * *

The altercation was quick, dirty, and over in less than 30 seconds, though the food fight slash mud run lasted much longer and provided all the cover Danny needed to sneak into the kitchen. He stopped short when he saw the ghostly lunch lady.

"Um… What brings you to Casper High, Miss… Lunch… Lady… Person?" Danny asked, wishing that this could be someone else's problem.

'It could have been. You just needed to not… do things.' Beetlejuice muttered.

The lunch lady ghost turned to look at the teen with a look of benign confusion. "Hello, children."

"Children-?" Danny turned to glare at his friend. "Sam."

'What is it with me and pushy goth chicks?' Beetlejuice huffed as Danny's eyes glowed yellow with annoyance.

Sam grinned. "So you are Danny Phantom again!"

Danny stared at her. "…Excuse me?"

The lunch lady ghost floated in the background, checking the clock. Lunch hour was almost over now. "I can return tomorrow, if that's agreeable." She said before disappearing through the floor. Her exit was ignored by everyone but Tucker, who raised a finger and opened his mouth, but apparently thought better of saying anything.

* * *

They gathered after school in the town park, checking absently for eavesdroppers before clustering around a picnic table to spill their respective parts of the story.

"So let me get this straight." Tucker said, pulling out his PDA to take notes. "Ghosts are real, not to mention dangerous, Danny is part ghost, and has 'discovered' either a new part of the Ghost Zone or a completely different dimension… and Sam is either a time traveler or from an alternate universe where Danny was part ghost but in a different way than he is here?" He gave his list a suspicious look, as if his PDA was capable of lying to him. "Am I the only normalish one in the group?" He asked loudly after a second.

Danny cast a look sideways at Sam. "I'm a little stuck on the fact that you deliberately put me in a potentially, no, an actually lethal situation without EVEN TELLING ME WHAT THE HELL YOU WERE ACTUALLY PLANNING!" He said, his voice going from perfect calmness to full throated yelling that was just as much Beetlejuice's voice as it was Danny's.

"And that's just creepy." Tucker noted, making another note on his PDA. "Blaming you for that, Sam."

"Alright, so I maybe should have told you about it earlier…" Sam said, holding her hands up in surrender. "But would you have believed me?" She asked.

"You called it on six different pop quizzes." Tucker said. "That would have been proof enough for me."

"Yeah, we would have believed you and you wouldn't have had to discombobulate my molecular structure to do it either." Danny said sourly. "Isn't that what friends do?"

Sam didn't answer, instead looking deep into the purple weave of her backpack, so Tucker scanned his notes again, organizing them for the fifth time before changing the subject.

"So… apparently Earth-2 Danny had a… battle cry and a transformation sequence." The tech geek squinted at his PDA. "…'like Sailor Moon'? Why did I write that?" He shook his head before looking at Danny. "Do you do that?"

Danny grimaced. "…Sort of."

"What, is it something like 'going ghost'?" Tucker smiled. "Dude, that's so nerdy,_ I'm_ calling you out on it if that's the case."

"It's actually…" Danny ducked his head under his arms in embarrassment. "… 'It's time to turn on the juice'."

A moment of silence passed, and then Tucker snorted. "Dude, that sucks."

Sam couldn't contain her own snort. "That does suck. What does that even mean?"

Danny ran his fingers through his hair. "It might just be easier to… give a demonstration." He said after a moment. 'Don't mess them up, please.' He mentally pleaded with the ghost.

'Fingers crossed, kid.' Beetlejuice said as Danny activated the transformation, hunching over as his hair bleached out and he fell under the picnic table.

"Danny!" Sam yelled, cutting off as a deathly pale hand with red fingertips grabbed on to the side of the table, pulling up one slightly rumpled Beetlejuice, who took the opportunity that the stunned silence gave him to dust himself off and adjust his tie into something resembling a straight line.

"The Bio-Exorcist!" Tucker exclaimed before squinting at the ghost. "…You look different." He said accusingly.

Beetlejuice flashed a crooked grin at the two teens. "A bit more like your buddy than I did last time, right?" He thumbed the sharper edge of his jaw that being part of Danny had brought out. "Not so sure of it myself, might just be a weird ghost thing, but, hey, not the worst alteration I've experienced." He waggled his red tinged fingers at Tucker, who cringed, hoping that those weren't an example.

"But why 'turn on the juice'?" Sam muttered, casting a suspicious eye towards the ghost. "Is it an electricity thing…?"

"It's part of the name!" Beetlejuice said, leaning over the table with a manic grin before drawing back into a much more smug posture. "Plus, y'know, the kid's quoting me and I _absolutely_ love that."

"BJ… B… Juice." Sam squinted at the ghost. "… What's the 'B'?"

Beetlejuice grinned as he pulled a beetle out of his hair and ate it without breaking eye contact. If she couldn't figure it out, well, he wasn't gonna play charades with her.

Tucker cringed as the unfortunate insect met its grisly end. "Dude, that is nasty." He said.

Sam looked away. "What is it with you and… beetles. Beetle… Juice?"

The ghost chuckled. "Got it in one. Smart cookie for a licorice stick."

* * *

**CHAPTER END**

* * *

**Well, here's one of those things I got distracted with, finally finished (at least this chapter of it). Feedback is appreciated, as always.**


	2. Chapter 2

**I HAD SUCH PLANS (and who knows, they might change as things go or they might not go into the story at all, I'm kind of weak at expanding universes (practice makes perfect, right?))**

**ANYWAY, here's chapter two.**

* * *

Danny made a mental note to self to never again accept intentionally given ghost hunting things from his dad. Especially not at six in the morning. Especially not when the man was attempting to going fishing through the portal that spits out malevolent spirits like a Hollywood horror script writer.

The Fenton Fisher tugged Danny towards the portal for a horrible moment before he dug his heels in, spinning the reel back. Alright, this might not be horrible, maybe just a single ectopus…

A giant, see-through, angry ghost dragon landed pretty squarely in the 'horrible' category. Danny flinched as the huge beast swept him up in a clawed fist.

"I WANT TO GO!" It roared, blasting Danny's hair back from his face.

"Breath mints, much?" Danny muttered as the dragon swung around again.

"I. WANT. TO. GO!" The dragon roared again. How Danny's dad hadn't heard this, let alone any other member of his family, he didn't know. In his dad's case, considering why the man had left in the first place, he _really_ didn't want to know.

"What did I do to deserve this?" Danny asked.

'You want an actual answer to that question?' Beetlejuice asked.

"I HAVE TO GO!" The dragon roared again.

"You're gonna have to wait in line." Danny said as he transformed, leaving Beetlejuice twisting around to kick the dragon square in the maw. As the spectral dragon slammed back into the wall, the bio-exorcist tapped the toe of his shoe.

"Still not sure where this athletic angle is coming from…" Beetlejuice muttered before breaking out into a vicious grin as the dragon propped itself back up. "But I like it!"

When Jack Fenton got back, he saw nothing out of the ordinary. Just one son trying to untangle the fishing line that he had managed to almost mummify himself in.

Perfectly standard Fenton behavior.

* * *

Lydia Deetz hadn't summoned Beetlejuice in years. At first, it had just been because it was high school didn't give her any time for fun, adventures, or pranks. After she had adjusted to that workload, it was college applications, part-time jobs, and just life in general that kept her from summoning the spirit. Eventually, there was no excuse beyond the weak rationalization that Beetlejuice had just been an imaginary friend and there was no point in playing games anymore. His name lent itself to the idea, at least. Of course, it was hard to rationalize the actual evidence, but at age eighteen, it was easy to look back at her twelve year old self and dismiss everything about her as 'childishness'.

She was twenty-eight now, living on her own in an apartment paid for with her own money, and thought of herself as a bit more reasonable about 'childishness' i.e. age is inevitable, but immaturity is eternal. It certainly sounded like something that Beetlejuice would say, imaginary friend or not, though probably not in those exact words.

Of course, he'd probably gag at the thought of her being lawfully employed too, she thought with a small smile as she pulled on her leggings before she pulled on her ankle boots. Walking briskly into bathroom (a quick glance at the wall clock told her that she had fifteen minutes to spend on her hair and face before she needed to be in the car), she paused. Leaning both her hands onto the sink, she stared into the mirror.

"Though I know I should be wary, still I venture someplace scary..." She began quietly.

The world seemed to still.

"Ghostly haunting, I turn loose…" Lydia said unflinchingly, gripping the chipped porcelain.

The overhead light flickered as the wind outside picked up, howling around the edges of the building like a caged animal.

"Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice!" She said again, almost to the point of yelling, never looking away from the mirror.

Nothing happened and the light quickly resumed its steady glow, illuminating the aging interior of the bathroom in merciless detail.

Lydia made a disgusted noise as she opened the medicine to get at her make-up. "Back to real life, Lyds." She said to herself as she started in on her eyeliner.

* * *

Danny sighed as he looked down at his lunch. Well, after several parent complaints, they were back to the normal menu, which was a small blessing. The trade-off was the fact that the local lunch lady ghost decided to loudly and happily announced the return to her precious menu to the student body, which meant that the lunch room was closed for the day while the students ate outside. Well, at least it wasn't raining.

Sam threw down her lunch tray, making her salad jump up into the air. "This is not the way it was supposed to go!" She snapped before sliding into the universal slouch of dissatisfied youth.

Danny raised an eyebrow. "Well, if there's one thing I've learned since coming to high school; nothing goes the way it was supposed to." Like pants. One would think that something designed to stay up would do exactly that, but ghostly pranksters apparently never quite give up the classics. Even on their own hosts.

"Not what I meant, but whatever. Accurate enough." The goth girl sighed, pointing her fork at her friend. "So, what's your plan for the dance?"

Danny blinked. "Wait, there was a dance?"

Tucker snorted. "Sam, it's like a week away. We've got plenty of time."

"To find dates?" She asked, raising an eyebrow. "I'm not going with both of you."

Tucker smirked, pulling on the straps of his backpack confidently. "With my good looks and charm, I'll be beating the girls off of me." He said before looking over to Danny slyly. "Plus, it's only fair for me to give Danny first go at asking Paulina out."

Danny stopped eating his lunch. "Wait, what?"

* * *

"You mean there's a ghost, an actual ghost, in the cafeteria, right now?" Lydia asked, sorely tempted to get up on her toes to look through the porthole windows into the blockaded area.

Lancer grimaced as he popped his last quarter into the soda machine. "So it would appear." He said, hitting the machine as his cola failed to appear. "Great Expectations!"

She gave into the temptation, looking through the glass at the old, green tinted (!) woman who was doing a gallows jig in the middle of the room, three feet off of the ground. "Deadly vous." She whispered, even as her coworker started slamming his bald head against the glass of the vending machine.

"That doesn't even make sense." Lancer muttered after the librarian bounced away. "'Deadly you'?" He pulled out his slang phrasebook. "Oh, there it is. 1988 was a year for bad grammar, wasn't it?"

* * *

"If anyone asks, it was a bet and it's your fault." Danny said, shooting a half-serious glare at Tucker before walking over to Paulina. The forty meters between where she was standing and where Danny's locker was felt like about two hundred as he went through the typical (as understood by Beetlejuice) rules for asking a girl out. Jewelry (unless she liked Ring Pop bases, that wasn't going to go), candy (Paulina was on a health kick, that was common knowledge), flowers…

Danny flicked his wrist, a surprisingly fresh white lily coming out of nowhere to rest in his increasingly clammy hand. Weird Beetlejuice powers to the rescue.

"Um. Hey, Paulina..."

* * *

Lydia raised an eyebrow as the premier popular girl of Casper High tossed a flawless white lily into the library trash bin. Well, she could guess what happened, what with the school dance only being a week away…

She pulled the flower out, looking over the surprisingly undamaged lily with mild curiosity. "White lilies mean… Purity, beauty, elegance, and sweetness… And they're popular at funerals." Lydia noted with a small smirk before dropping it in a vase with a bit of water from her bottle before returning to watching the books not fly off the shelves.

She still couldn't quite believe that Paulina had just thrown away the flower. Maybe whoever had given her that necklace (colorblind as they might be, since that green and Paulina's traditional shade of pink did** not** complement each other) had won out. Greed and vanity certainly had a way of tipping the scales, didn't they?

* * *

"I can't believe you actually did it." Tucker said, walking up as Danny stared into the empty hallway, long after the most popular girl in the school was gone.

"I can't believe she actually said yes." Danny said, still awestruck by the fact his attempts at being smooth actually worked. Sure, a completely random necklace in his backpack (seriously, where had that come from?) had tilted the scales in his favor at the end, but still, it was Paulina and she had said yes.

"I can't believe you gave her a _cursed_ Ghost Zone necklace as a _bribe_." Sam muttered.

Tucker and Danny turned to stare at her. "What?"

* * *

"Ms. Deetz."

Lydia put away the book (The Watch That Ends The Night) in her hands before turning to her coworker. "Mr. Lancer."

The vice-principal parsed over the stack of returned books for a second. "Not over much activity in the library, is there?"

Lydia sighed as she grabbed the next book. "Not since the last big project…"

Lancer cringed. "The freshmen?"

"Actually, it was the sophomore class's Titanic research week, and I am **so** glad that I don't have to listen to any more tone-deaf renditions of 'My Heart Will Go On' or field any questions about if Clive Cussler is an appropriate source to put on a bibliography card." She shook her head, spider earrings tinkling. "Honestly, the freshmen have been pretty mild this year, somehow. Of course," Lydia added. "There haven't been any big fads yet, beyond those ridiculous fleecy tees. I heard that one girl firebombed a store in the mall because they didn't have her size."

The vice-principal made a face. "Only in Amity Park." He sighed. "Anyway, I came to ask you if you were free this Friday; we're short on chaperones for the school dance…"

* * *

Danny adjusted his tie again, having given up on trying getting his hair to actually lie flat. All this was done without the use of his mirror, since Beetlejuice was occupying most of the frame and talking.

'What I'm saying, D-man, is that you've got to loosen up! You have the means, through me, the Pranking King, and there ain't no lack of motivation; hell, you could call it 'karma' if you want justification…' The ghost grinned nastily.

Danny rolled his eyes. "I'm not going to use my ghost powers on Dash Baxter, because one, I'm not interested in sending him to the hospital, and two, your powers are as subtle as a neon pink brick to the face. I'm not getting caught, experimented on, and _dissected_ for him." He hissed.

A bark of laughter tore out of Beetlejuice's mouth. 'The ALF defense? That's it? C'mon, I know it sounds cheesy coming from a dead guy, but **live a little**!'

Danny pulled at the skull cuff links that Sam had given him (more like thrown at his head) the day before. "This is me living. I've got a date with the most popular girl in school…" He clipped on the matching collar pins, the little skulls barely showing up against the white of his dress shirt.

The ghost snorted. 'Yeah, and she's an improvement on Claire Brewster, I'm sure, but that ain't saying much, Danno.'

Danny's eyebrow twitched. "I'm actually maintaining a steady grade now that I'm used to ghost hunting hours…"

'Judicious application of coffee, Wikipedia, and a thesaurus.' Beetlejuice declared, affecting an educated accent.

"And I've managed to actually get used to you, which is surprising, weird, and slightly disturbing."

Beetlejuice raised his fist victoriously. 'Smells like success to me!' He sniffed at his armpit. 'Or maybe that's just me.' He said smugly.

"You have no shame, do you?" Danny muttered.

The smug smirk widened into an ear-to-ear grin. 'Nope.'

* * *

Lydia sighed as she checked her closet. She wasn't going to wear her normal work clothes, even if that's what most of the other chaperones would be wearing (she wouldn't put it past the Fentons to show up to an event in their hazmat suits, that's for sure), but…

"Alright, the red wedding dress is a definite no…" That was for Halloween, if ever. "Little black dress… maybe." It was more date wear than anything else, but she could dress it up for the evening if she was desperate… Lydia thumbed through the rest of the clothes. Nothing, nadda, definite 80's throw back, too goth for school…

She looked at the clock and sighed. "Little black dress it is." She said, pulling out the hanger.

* * *

Sam actually being at the dance was a bit of a surprise, to say the least. Not to mention that she was decked out in what looked suspiciously like Fenton TM ghost hunting equipment around her dress (the ectoplasmic green did not complement that bold purple or the midnight black in the least). She raised an eyebrow at Danny's cuff links, though she didn't say anything.

"You said you didn't want to go!" Tucker said. "Is that some kind of girl thing? Saying one thing while meaning the exact opposite? I can't keep up with that!"

Sam rolled her eyes before tossing a tube of lipstick at Tucker. "I'm not here about the dance (even if it is a complete farce); I'm just here to deal with the inevitable ghost attack."

Tucker threw the lipstick back. "My good looks are all natural, Sam, and good enough to snag me a-"

Tucker's date hurried by on the arm of another boy. "Hey, sorry to drop this on you, but Gary said yes, so… You're dateless!" She said, before the pair ran into the rainbow lit gym, leaving Tucker with his mouth hanging open.

Sam smirked. "You were saying?" She said, holding up the lipstick again.

Tucker took it with a sullen look. "This better secretly be a taser or something." He muttered as he tucked it into his breast pocket.

* * *

"This. Is. Officially. The worst night of my life." Tucker declared, slumped in a folding chair as the rest of the couples danced the night away.

"Let me guess… date ditched you?" Lydia asked, leaning against the bleachers.

"Yup. Among other assorted weirdness." The sound of a dragon roaring cut him off as a third of the gym roof spontaneously stopped existing and a ghostly dragon the size of a school bus crawled snarling into the building, holding an unconscious student in hand. "Speaking of which..." Tucker said, darting off to the side as he pulled out… was that lipstick? Lydia shut her mouth as a beam of green energy shot out of the tube, missing the dragon by a small mile and destroying the school's volley ball victory pennant. Alright, laser lipstick.

"I was wondering where that went." Mrs. Fenton said as she activated a collapsible bo staff, swatting at the dragon's knuckles after it reached too close.

"SHALLOW GIRL!" The spectral beast roared.

Danny ducked behind the bleachers, checking for any observers (alright, one band kid stuffed into a trash can can't do much witnessing) before clicking the heel of his right shoe against the floor. Black stripes ran up the length of his suit as the rest turned white, his dress shirt turned mulberry red, and Danny's skin blanched out to a bloodless grey. Adjusting his cuffs, Beetlejuice phased through the top of the bleachers before putting two fingers in his mouth and delivering a sharp whistle.

"Hey, dragon! Stop dragging your feet and pay attention to the main attraction!"

The dragon spun its head around, snapping its jaws at the ghost before letting loose a gusty roar.

Beetlejuice just grinned. "Now that's more like it!" He said, crouching into a fighting stance before launching himself at the beast in a blur of black and white.

* * *

Beetlejuice levitated in a horizontal position near the abandoned lunch table, seemingly the only untouched area in the ruined gymnasium, sipping at a glass of punch. "Now that, boys and girls, was a real party." He said to the only other two humans in the room, who were sitting on a pair of surviving folding chairs.

Tucker raised an eyebrow. "Do I really want to ask what usually happens at the parties you go to?"

The ghost grinned. "Chaos, destruction, screaming, a little Day-Ooh if it's a dinner party." He pulled a silverfish out of his hair, rolling it between his fingertips before flicking it into his mouth. "Of course, the last party I went to was to break it up, so I don't know if that counts."

"You, breaking up a party? What, was it too loud for your undead sensibilities?" Sam asked, running her thumb over the stone of the necklace that had turned her into a dragon earlier in the evening. It wasn't around her neck now, instead being held loosely in her hand.

Beetlejuice cackled. "Loud enough to wake the dead! And, believe me, I should know."

* * *

Lydia sighed as she sank into her sofa, kicking off her heels across the floor. Well, it hadn't been boring, so that was… something. The ghost dragon, she could have honestly done without, even if she was a little curious about why it was so cheesed off at 'Shallow Girl'. Maybe it was a teenage ghost dragon. Wouldn't be that much weirder than her average, increasingly haunted life. She turned her thoughts to the other ghost of the evening.

He hadn't looked too different from her students, once you got past the obvious deadness of him and that caustic confidence. Messy bleach blonde hair, a trashy suit holding together that mess of elbows and knees, and a laugh that immediately made a teacher want to check that the fire alarms hadn't been pulled. Really, he reminded her of Beetlejui-

Lydia blinked, her eyes focusing back on her apartment's ceiling in less than a second. Oh hell no.

Nope, nadda, no. N. O. P. E.

She did not just set Beetlejuice on the third most haunted city in Illinois. Definitely not something she'd mention on her next resume after the inevitable destruction of Casper High.

* * *

**To whom it may concern - Yes, I really want to get the Neitherworld characters involved, because just imagine someone trying to treat Ginger like a malevolent spirit (Tap Dance of Doom?)**


	3. Chapter 3

**Oh, it's been a long time since I've worked on this one, hasn't it? Also I accidentally updated without formatting. /so embarrassing...**

* * *

Tucker made a face as the ghost was sucked into the Thermos. "The Box Ghost. Really. Of all the gimmicks, boxes."

Beetlejuice chuckled, spinning the Fenton Thermos (which neither of the boys was going to ask about the exact origin of) on his finger tip. "Honestly, I've seen worse. This pair up in New England couldn't even get the people who moved into their house to blink, and that's when they really wanted them out. Hired me to do the job, disagreed with my actually doing said job, and… well, long story short, I ended up waiting in a queue for three years, sandwiched between a witch doctor and a not-so-great white hunter."

"That's the afterlife? Just…" Sam waved her hand around, "waiting?"

Beetlejuice shrugged, sinking down to floating a few inches above the pavement. "Well, for around here, that's pretty much your first experience of it. Once you get through that, unless you get stuck on haunting duty, which, let me tell you, is the pits, you're put out in another dimension, like the Neitherworld, sometimes as yourself as you were, sometimes as something completely new. Sort of like reincarnation, I guess. At least that's how it works in this country. And maybe Canada."

The goth girl looked thoughtful. "And then other countries probably have their own traditions."

"Yeah! The Land of The Remembered is a pretty slick vay-kay spot if I do say so myself. Though the Land of the Forgotten ain't exactly bad either, 'cording to your taste." Beetlejuice grimaced. "Just a tip, if you're dead, never go to Japan. Crazy samurai reapers everywhere trying to stab every ghost they see. Make Juno and Mental looked laid back, those soul reapers. Not that England is any better in that department."

"Alright, taking notes." Tucker said, even as he tapped at the keys of his PDA. "Crazy… reapers… everywhere…" He paused. "Like black cloak and scythe reapers?"

"Like Victorian fancy dress and lawn care equipment reapers."

Tucker's eyebrows shot up. "My brain says lawn mower, but my heart says chainsaw."

Beetlejuice grinned. "You know it."

* * *

Across the Atlantic, a red-haired reaper blinked, and then went back to eviscerating a target, cackling all the while.

* * *

Danny was getting a little tired of the random sojourns into the Neitherworld, mostly for the simple reason that spending entire nights running from the ghost cops wasn't helping his grade point average (though that was, just hanging on to a C+). "Well, so much for becoming an astronaut." He muttered, even as he looked over his last graded paper from the roof of what he hoped was Beetlejuice's house, because the idea of two people who'd slap 'BJ'S ROADHOUSE' in neon and flashing lights on top of a split-level building was mildly terrifying. He grimaced at the thought, even as he rolled his shoulders under Beetlejuice's striped suit jacket. "Sometimes I really hate this suit."

"Hey, don't knock the look." Beetlejuice hissed through Danny's mouth, taking control of the teen's hands to adjust his lapels.

"Beetlejuice? Is that you?" A French accented voice called up.

Danny looked down at the speaker and, for want of a better option, blinked.

The beret-wearing skeleton blinked back. "Beetlejuice?"

Danny lifted a finger, but whatever he was going to say was cut off by Beetlejuice taking over. "Hey, Jacque." He smirked, showing off crooked teeth that didn't quite fit in Danny's mouth. "Miss me?"

* * *

Jacques LaLean was probably one of the least weird people Danny had ever met, and that was considering he was a fitness oriented living skeleton who willingly (that seemed like an extremely important detail) bunked with Beetlejuice.

Spilling his story, along with Beetlejuice taking over to add his own commentary, Danny waited for what he hoped was good advice.

What he got was 'Oh dear'. Oh, and a talking spider tap dancing on his head.

Danny freaked out at that and did the only thing that he really could manage in a panic.

Teleport.

And that's how Danny Fenton accidentally brought two Neitherworld denizens into the land of the living.

* * *

Danny growled as he looked at his mid-term report card. A D+ in Biology? Seriously?

Sam gave him a conspiratorial look. "You know…" She said, even as she turned back to one of the library's computers, quickly bringing up Google. "If you wanna get that grade up, I have just the idea…"

Danny couldn't help his eyes flashing a poisonous yellow. "I've got a walking, talking, tap-dancing spider hiding under my bed, a living skeleton hanging out in my closet, a bat-shit crazy ghost in my head, and you want me to add an optional, extra-credit research paper on a super-rare gorilla that only you are interested on top of the insanity that is now my life?" He snarled, even as his nails dug gouges into the work table he was sitting at.

"Um, yeah." Sam said, as if that was a simple matter of fact. "Because one, it's the right thing to do, and two, extra credit so your parents and the school stays off your case?"

"I just want to find a portal into the Neitherworld so I don't have to worry about Jacque or Ginger getting torn apart molecule by molecule by my parents." Danny said, imitating his father's voice perfectly for a second, pinching the bridge of his nose. "I don't have time for extra credit... or your agendas."

Sam paused for a second. "That felt almost like déjà vu."

"Let me guess, you did the exact same thing on Earth-2?" Tucker asked, looking entirely unimpressed. "Because, if there's one thing that you have a grip on, Sam, it's the concept of Aesop amnesia."

"What?"

Tucker took over the computer, deftly accessing a different website. "It's a TVTropes thing. It's about when a character on a show learns an important lesson in one episode, but a few more down the line and, poof, it's like the learning experience never happened."

"Well, that's nice, but one problem; this isn't a TV show!" She snapped.

"No, it's just a mediocre humor-horror movie involving demonic possession." Danny deadpanned.

"Like Jennifer's Body." Tuckered offered, even as his head slowly turned to follow another female body. "Speaking of which…"

"Tucker, stop staring at the librarian." Sam snapped.

Tucker couldn't control the dull smile on his face. "A lady like that… almost makes studying worth it."

"Dude." Danny said, though he followed Tucker's lovelorn look before seizing up. "No. Way."

Sam gave the librarian another look. She was tall, distinctly Goth in style (Sam hadn't really registered it before, because it was a subdued Goth compared to the louder style that she had, but still), with black hair tied up in a palm-tree style. "Alright." Sam said, turning towards her friends again. "What's wrong?"

Danny hunched down, pulling Sam and Tucker in conspiratorially. His eyes flashed yellow. "That's Lydia." Beetlejuice growled through Danny's mouth. "Ain't no way it ain't her."

Sam pulled the Spock eyebrow. "Friend of yours?"

Beetlejuice rolled his glowing eyes. "_Ask a stupid question_. But, last I heard, she was in Winter River, Connecticut, not in Amity Park, Ass-End of Nowhere."

"We're in Illinois." Tucker pointed out.

"Same difference."

Sam frowned. "How would she know you were here?"

"That's the thing." Beetlejuice hissed. "She wouldn't. Haven't seen her in years."

Sam flicked her eyes between the oblivious librarian and the bio-exorcist. "How many years?"

"Fifteen, twenty, somewhere in that ballpark." The ghost said, a guilty look crossing Danny's face for fleeting moment before turning defensive. "Time doesn't flow normal for ghosts, just telling you that up front."

Tucker clasped his hands in front of his face. "Alright. But there's something I need to know…" He said seriously. "…You know her number right?"

Sam bit down a snicker as Beetlejuice kicked the chair out from under the other boy.

* * *

Skulker frowned as he spied on his prey. Boring. One would suppose that a human ghost hybrid would do, well, anything besides mingle with the other humans. But no, school, home, social interaction, rinse, wash, repeat! The occasional fight with other ghosts, that was a given for actually being a ghost, but still.

Boring. Boring, boring, bored.

Skulker downloaded a human game app, and spent five minutes throwing infuriated birds at smug green pigs before remembering that, yes, there was a hunt on. A boring hunt, but still, a hunt.

After the third day, he asked himself an important question; why was he hunting this halfa again?

Oh, yeah. For the novelty of it. Novelty, wow. Certainly wasn't here for the excitement of an extended hunt, nooo.

He sighed, and put his binoculars back up to his face. Sometimes Skulker wished he could pick a different obsession.

* * *

The one upside to going to the zoo for six hours to watch a purple back gorilla scratch its butt was that, because literally nobody else was doing that, Danny could sneak Jacque and Ginger out to suffer with the rest of his friends, which, in turn, made Sam regret dragging them into this in the first place.

For that, Danny could stand another hour of Ginger tapdancing, even with Beetlejuice screaming in his ear about anything and everything.

At least the evening was quiet enough for him to work on his other homework.

"You should try to communicate with Samson!" Sam chirped again.

"You see this? Not a gorilla." Danny gestured at himself. "And really, if you want to communicate with something that pretty much only scratches its butt, you should be asking Dash or Beetlejuice."

"He has a point." Jacque said with a shrug, even as Tucker tried to pull the skeleton's beret into the same style as his, though the sheer difference in height was making it a study in ineffectiveness. The skeleton was wearing a long trench coat and thick false beard that Danny had managed to scrounge up on short notice, though the disguise was paper thin at best, considering that Jacques LaLean was a living skeleton, with a (lack of) face to match the description, even if one disregarded the glowing yellow eyes hiding behind his dark sunglasses.

"If it's disgusting, inappropriate, or downright mean, you can be sure that Beetlejuice has made an effort to master it." Ginger added, taking a break from her dancing to check a section in a nearby textbook that managed to catch her attention. "Like his armpit music career."

Danny began to open his mouth, but Tucker cut him off. "Just saying it now, I do **not** want to know."

* * *

Danny returned home (with Jacques and Ginger going with Tucker and Sam respectively, since, relatively speaking, those were safer options than staying in the house with the mildly morally bankrupt ghost hunters) to a magazine being thrown at his face. As it flopped to the floor like a defeated bird, he gave his sister a look. "What?" He asked defensively.

Jazz scowled at him, red hair looking slightly frazzled compared to its normally meticulously smooth appearance. "You knew we had an interview with Genius Magazine today!"

Danny frowned. "Um, actually, I didn't…"

She folded her arms in front of her chest, her face the picture of disgust tinged disappointment. "And you just had to leave Dad here."

"I don't know what you expected me to do…" Besides fight down the anger that would make his eyes flash a very un-Danny yellow anyway.

'Unless you wanted us to put him in the gorilla exhibit with his brethren...' Beetlejuice muttered, even as Danny folded his own arms in front of him.

"So he could ruin everything." Jazz finished.

'Hey!' Beetlejuice snapped in Danny's ear. 'That's my job.' He sniffed. 'And I do it so much better.'

"I had an extra credit project to do and, last time I checked, Dad was one of the adults, not me!" Danny snapped back at his sister, throwing up his hands in frustration.

Danny's mom popped her head into the room. "What kind of extra credit?" She asked, as if there hadn't been an argument sandwiching that tidbit of information.

He facepalmed. "I just got back from the zoo where I watched a gorilla scratch its butt for six hours, I don't wanna talk about it." He said, trudging up to his room.

"I don't want to talk about it, fear me." The Ghost-Gabber declared from the living room. Jazz shot it a dirty look, as if that one thing was keeping her from a normal life.

* * *

Lydia sighed as she checked the library over again. All the computers were off along with the lights, all hangers on shoved out to return to their homes, all of the loose books sorted, the ghosts currently in residence happy… She waved at the severe looking Edwardian woman who nodded tersely back at her before floating back into the old rolodex section before sighing. Well, happy-ish. As happy as they got, anyway.

"If you wanted more reaction from Eleanor, you are going to sorely disappointed, Ms. Deetz." The other resident spirit drawled from his location hovering halfway up to the ceiling, lazily reading a book of poetry, even as his black coat floated around him like it was weightless material in water rather than thick felt in midair.

Darnell Edelstein had been one of the previous librarians, as Lydia had found out, as was Eleanor Twitty, the Edwardian lady, though they weren't contemporary with each other. Eleanor had been murdered in the 1920s, when the library wasn't part of the school but effectively the town's only place of learning, while Darnell had been locked and forgotten in a broom closet over winter break in the 1980s, where he died. Despite, or maybe because of the manner of his demise, he was not shy about making caustic commentary about anything from the faculty to the student body.

Lydia just shook her head. "I'm not looking for a reaction, it's just easier to get along than to constantly fight over silly things." She smiled as she spun her keys around on her finger before locking the door. "But, I'll admit, most of the other ghosts I used to know were much… louder about their preferences." 'And infinitely less likely to make the rolodexes explode in the faces of their unfortunate victims' was unspoken.

The male ghost smirked as he snapped his book closed. "I wouldn't be surprised. This is a library after all. Quietness is queen." He nodded to her as she exited. "A good evening to you then."

* * *

Sam sighed, even as the perkily pink spider spun around happily on the ceiling of her room. Ginger, as unGoth as she was, was at least a good roommate, outside of the constant tap-dancing. Still, the fact that Ginger existed was a bit of a bother to the goth girl, though not of her own fault.

It really was Beetlejuice's fault.

'Sam, it's almost always Beetlejuice's fault.' the spider had said in commiseration after Sam had muttered about it the first time. 'He's mean, and he's scuzzy, but there are worse guys than him. Lots of them.'

Sam really didn't want to meet anyone worse than Beetlejuice, though, really, she already had. Would. Time travel tenses. Ugh. She pulled out her black book again, going over the information that she had forced her brain to regurgitate.

So she had messed up, making those wishes around Desiree, even after they had gone through that crisis already at her expense. 'I wish things could go back the way they were', 'I wish things weren't like this', 'I wish you'd grow a sense of humor'. Three wishes, three details, one big change, and only one person who remembered how things were before it.

Her. Again. It was like a super-power of sorts. Remembering things that she wasn't supposed to.

She'd assumed it had been a replay of the 'I wish I had never met you' scenario and gone through the motions again. She'd assumed it would be fine.

Well, there's a saying about assuming things and, boy, did it come in to play.

Instead of the black and white jumpsuit, it was a black and white pinstripe suit, and the hero Danny Phantom was traded out for… whatever Beetlejuice was.

New people appeared, old enemies were slowly resurfacing, but…

Sam shook her head. "What am I worrying about?" She said brightly, trying to force the unsettling train of thought off its tracks.

What if this was her fault?

She ignored the question, and turned on her laptop, and asked Ginger if she liked musicals.

* * *

Exactly why a ghost wanted to keep him as a trophy was unclear, but Danny was one hundred percent certain that he wasn't having any of it. Especially not in his room when he was trying to get some sorely needed sleep.

His eyes flashed yellow as he forced the other ghost transparent, phasing the two of them through the wall and out of the house. "Do you have any idea how annoying this is?" Danny snarled, even as his hair bleached out and his teeth went crooked. "I am not in the mood to play with you right now."

The ghost just grinned cockily. "Does it look like I care about your feelings?" He shot a ghost beam at the ghost-hybrid, his smile widening as Danny dodged and finished the transformation into Beetlejuice. "I only care about the hunt." He pulled a long, high-tech rifle/cannon from his back, the weapon whining to life dangerously. "And I have never failed to bag my prey."

"Sounds fun." Beetlejuice said, even as he charged his hands up with ghost energy. "Ever run with a fella named 'Van Pelt'?"

* * *

Lydia did expect to run into Beetlejuice at some point again. She lived in Amity Park, he appeared to be haunting the place; really, another meeting was inevitable.

She didn't expect him to fall through her (thankfully parked) car and, slightly more importantly, through her body, followed by another, larger, and significantly angrier ghost. Okay, maybe the last part wasn't much of a surprise.

"BEETLEJUICE!" She screamed as the larger ghost was thrown back up through the car, Beetlejuice following behind with… was that a thermos he was sucking the other ghost into? "Beetlejuice?" Lydia asked again.

"In the flesh!" He said with a wild grin as he spun around, before reeling back a little. "Lyds?"

Lydia frowned. Something wasn't quite right. "Beetlejuice…" She started to say when something in his pocket beeped. The ghost snapped his fingers, teleporting away and leaving Lydia alone in her car with nothing but her questions for company.

* * *

Danny sighed as he lifted his binoculars back up to his face. "I don't think we're going to find anything out about Samson, Sam." He said, after watching the gorilla scratch its butt again, probably for the hundredth time. "Really, it's not like-" The gorilla shifted to scratch somewhere else. "-OH MY GOD."

* * *

"And you, unlike the caretakers at the zoo, were able to discern that Samson was actually a Delilah?" Mr. Lancer said, raising an eyebrow as he scanned Danny's paper.

"Let's just say that I was at the wrong place at the wrong time and the image has been seared into my retina." Danny said.

Mr. Lancer cringed. "Fair enough." He scribbled a new grade at the top of the paper, the last stroke of the red pen leaving a slight splatter on the thin paper. "Enjoy your C+. Next time, though, might I recommend that you try the library?"

Danny waited until he was clear of the classroom to slam his face into a wall.

* * *

Lydia sighed, even as she tapped a pencil against the spotless page of her note book. She wanted to write something, anything, but really, the only thing she could think about was Beetlejuice and why, not to mention 'how?'.

Darnell hovered around to stand next to her. "Having difficulties?" He drawled, even as his pitch black eyes met hers.

She shook her head. "Just… trying to wrap my head around something that happened recently."

The ghost rolled his eyes. "Start at the beginning then." He said with a long suffering tone that screamed 'do you need anything else blindingly obvious to be pointed out to you today?' before floating away and down the non-fiction aisle.

Lydia blinked and then started to write.

_When I was twelve years old, I became best friends with a dead man…_

* * *

**Hoo, boy, it's been a while since I've worked on this.**

**Reviews and comments are wholly welcome, and I'm going to try to actually keep working on things.**

**Motivation, ho-rah!**


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